(בֵית לֶחֶם), house or place of bread; Sept. Βαθλεέμ, a city of Judah, six miles southward from Jerusalem, on the road to Hebron. It was generally called Bethlehem-Judah, to distinguish it from another Bethlehem in Zebulum. Bethlehem is celebrated as the birth-place of David and of our Saviour, and as the scene of the Book of Ruth.

It has always been an inhabited place, and, from its sacred associations, has been visited by an unbroken series of pilgrims and travellers. It is now a large straggling village, and is beautifully situated on the brow of a high hill, which rises in parterres of vineyards, almond-groves, and fig plantations, watered by gentle rivulets that murmur through the terraces. At the farthest extremity of the town is the Latin convent, connected with which is the Church of the Nativity, said to have been built by the Empress Helena, and alleged to be the most chaste architectural building now remaining in Palestine. It is a spacious and handsome hall, consisting of a central nave amid aisles separated from each other by rows of tall Corinthian pillars of grey marble. Two spiral staircases lead to the cave called the "Grotto of the Nativity," which is about 20 feet below the level of the church, and is lined with Italian marbles, and lighted by numerous lamps. Here a star inlaid in the marble is said to mark the exact spot where the Saviour was born, and in a kind of recess, a little below the level of the rest of the floor, is a block of white marble, hollowed out in the form of a manger, to mark the place of the one in which the infant Jesus was laid. Although tradition is in favour of this being the place of the Nativity, there are many probabilities against it. The convent was long the abode of the learned and celebrated Jerome, and most of his works were composed here. Besides the Grotto of the Nativity, and the Tomb of Rachel, Bethlehem possesses three remarkable cisterns, which are supplied with water from a pool above the town: the largest is 582 feet by 207 feet at one end, and 148 feet at the other, with a depth of 50 feet; the central one is 423 feet by 250 feet and 160 feet, and has a depth of 39 feet.

The inhabitants are said to be 3000, and were all native Christians at the time of the most recent visits. Their chief trade is in beads, crosses, and other relics. The people are remarkable for their ferocity and rudeness, which is indeed the common character of the inhabitants of most of the places accounted holy in the East.

The best accounts of modern Bethlehem are those of Clarke, Wittman, Richardson, Buckingham, Hardy, Elliot, Wilde, Robinson, Paxton, Olin, Prokesch, Richter, Schubert. See also Raumer's Palastina, pp. 307-313.

BETHELHEMITES, or BETHELIMITES, in Ecclesiastical History, a sort of monks introduced into England in the year 1257, habited like the Dominicans, except that on their breast they wore a star with five rays, in memory of the star or comet which appeared over Bethlehem at the nativity of our Saviour. They were called at Cambridge, and had only one house in England.